December 02, 2011

Random Thoughts On A Friday

Some Thoughts About Apple

The Steve Jobs book is terrific. Jobs was apparently a total pain in the ass and a complete dick -- as some brilliantly creative people are. (I only got to meet him once, for about 15 seconds.) Jobs was a walking, talking warehouse of contradictions. My only gripe with the book -- a little repetitious.

Why does Apple make things so hard? Last week my book 101 Contrarians Ideas About Advertising was published at Amazon in the Kindle format. It was a breeze. I published it in less than an hour. At this writing it's the #2 advertising eBook at Amazon. (Fucking Tipping Point.) On the other hand, about 4 weeks ago I sent in my red tape "paperwork" to Apple to get the book published at the iBookstore. Not only have I not heard from them, there is no way to even find out if they received the paperwork or what the status is. What a pain in the ass.

I bought a new MacBook Air about 2 months ago. After a few weeks it started randomly running out of memory when there should have been 100's of gigs left. I struggled with this for weeks. It disrupted my work and cost me hours of frustration and anxiety. Finally our IT guy discovered that this was a "known problem" to Apple. If it was a "known problem" I'd like to know why they didn't let us buyers know so we wouldn't have to go through the torture that I went through? They have fixed it, but that doesn't take away the time I wasted or the aggravation I suffered. By the way, I hate Lion.

Tips For Authors
This week I stumbled upon a blog post by Seth Godin called Advice For Authors from a few years ago. I wish I had found it several months ago. Some great advice in it if you are a writer.

The Herman Cain Affair
This whole thing makes me sick. I don't give a damn about Herman Cain and would never have voted for him, but the hypocrisy of this country on the subject of sex is just appalling. If sexual purity ware a condition of employment the following people would never have been president: Bill Clinton, John F. Kennedy, Dwight Eisenhower, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson. Not to mention probably every other president we've had. Can't we just stipulate that everybody lies about sex and get on with it?

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Ad Contrarian Says:

"Shakespeare was a storyteller. You're a copywriter.""Good ads appeal to us as consumers. Great ads appeal to us as humans."

"Social Media: Tens of millions of disagreeable people looking to make trouble."

"As an ad medium, the web is a much better yellow pages and a much worse television."

"Sometimes success in the advertising business requires sitting quietly and letting clients proceed with their hysterical delusions."

"Marketers prefer precise answers that are wrong to imprecise answers that are right."

"Brand studies last for months, cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, and generally have less impact on business than cleaning the drapes."

"The idea that the same consumer who was frantically clicking her TV remote to escape from advertising was going to merrily click her mouse to interact with it is going to go down as one of the great advertising delusions of all time."

"Nobody really knows what "creativity" is. Every year thousands of people take a pilgrimage to find out. This involves flying to Cannes, snorting cocaine, and having sex with smokers."

"Marketers habitually overestimate the attraction of new things and underestimate the power of traditional consumer behavior."

"We don’t get them to try our product by convincing them to love our brand. We get them to love our brand by convincing them to try our product."

"In American business, there is nothing stupider than the previous generation of management."

"If the message is right, who cares what screen people see it on? If the message is wrong, what difference does it make?"

"The only form of product information on the planet less trustworthy than advertising is the shrill ravings of web maniacs."

"There's no bigger sucker than a gullible marketer convinced he's missing a trend."

"All ad campaigns are branding campaigns. Whether you intend it to be a branding campaign is irrelevant. It will create an impression of your brand regardless of your intent."

"Nobody ever got famous predicting that things would stay pretty much the same."